Learning to relocalize: institutional entrepreneurs as transformative agents in public food services

ABSTRACT

We explore purposive institutional change and the role of institutional entrepreneurs in initiating and driving relational learning processes. Supplementing new institutionalist theory with an institutional learning lens and using a longitudinal set of rich qualitative interview and observation data, we investigate how institutional entrepreneurs engage in transformational work to effectuate change in dominant institutional logics, thus transforming the institutional field. We propose that institutional entrepreneurs, by skilfully utilizing discursive and material practices to catalyze reciprocal learning processes, can introduce a new institutional logic and ensure its adoption and internalization by pivotal actors and stakeholders. We illustrate these dynamics using a municipality situated in Northern Finland as an example. The municipality has successfully managed to transform its food services as part of efforts to develop more sustainable regional economies and communities. It offers a rare case of successful purposive institutional change and an interesting best practice example both nationally and internationally.

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional change
• institutional entrepreneur
• institutional logic
• learning
• local food
• public food services

Introduction

In response to concerns about global environmental degradation and the disintegration of societal fabric, public as well as private actors have become cognizant of the need to change and re-examine the institutions that underpin our everyday lives and the ways we are organized as societies (Bonnedahl and Heikkurinen 2018; Connor and Dovers 2004). Many have also become active in seeking to change them. The purposive translocation of our critical societal institutions onto a more sustainable footing has proved an extremely difficult and complicated undertaking that requires a better understanding of the operation and change of institutions.

While extant concepts and theoretical tools for understanding institutional change have concentrated on one-way or unidimensional change agency, institutional change is not a unilateral process of imposition by skilled and capable individuals but rather unfolds in relational interactions between focal actors (Emirbayer 1997; Hallett and Hawbaker 2020). We argue that by overlooking the relational aspects of institutional change, critical dynamics related to the microprocesses of institutional change, i.e. what happens at the day-to-day level and in individual interactions between focal actors, remain hidden. As a response, we combine institutional logics, institutional entrepreneurship, and institutional learning literatures (see e.g. DiMaggio 1988; Friedland and Alford 1991; Haunschild and Chandler 2008) to develop a more nuanced relational interpretation of how focal transformative agents, or institutional entrepreneurs, may accomplish purposive institutional transformation. Using the concept of learning we analyze how these institutional entrepreneurs, in micro interactions and encounters, manage affective responses and involvement, and motivate institutional agents and stakeholders to engage in new learning possibilities and trajectories, while being reciprocally influenced by these interactions.

To develop these arguments, we focus on a municipality situated in Northern Finland. Our case municipality has successfully managed to transform the institutional field of municipal food services as part of strategic efforts to develop more sustainable local and regional economies and communities. This has meant the enactment of considerable changes to the underlying institutional practices regarding food preparation and procurement as well as mind-sets, practices, and collaborative relations between local food producers, processors, and municipal and regional actors engaged in the project. We analyze interview data gathered over the period 2014 to 2023, comprising field observations and series of interviews conducted with local food actors and developers in our case municipality.

We find that skilful and persistent transformational work enacted by institutional entrepreneurs plays a key role in institutional learning processes – and is thus a critical success factor when pursuing institutional change. By catalyzing repetitive cycles of learning and alternating between material and discursive practices vis-à-vis their institutionally important environments, audiences, and stakeholders, the institutional entrepreneurs in our case municipality have shown success in transforming the prevailing institutional field of municipal food services to align with local and regional sustainable development objectives.

The article is structured as follows: First, we elaborate on the theoretical context, presenting the key terms and concepts used in the study and describing the institutional fields of public and municipal food services. We then proceed to describe the case municipality and explain how we gathered and analyzed our data. After presenting our findings, we conclude with a discussion on the implications of our findings in terms of theory and practice.

Theoretical context

The institutional logics perspective on institutional change and stabilization

Since our case study is an example of purposive action towards institutional change (see Connor and Dovers 2004; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) in a hybrid institutional setting characterized by hierarchical, market and network/community logics, the ideas and insights put forward within the new institutionalist theory (Powell and DiMaggio 1991) in general, and the institutional logics perspective in particular, provide us with potent tools of investigation. New institutionalist theories focus on how institutions, understood as formal and informal constraints and rules that structure social (inter)action, constrain, and enable the behaviour of individuals, groups, and organizations (DiMaggio 1988; Friedland and Alford 1991). The institutional logics perspective, in turn, elaborates on the new institutionalist viewpoints, especially from the perspective of institutional stability, change, and legitimacy (see Lounsbury and Wang 2020; Thornton and Ocasio 2008; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012). The perspective assumes that at a certain point in time any one institution is guided by a leading organizing logic, that is, its distinctive institutional logic. An institutional logic includes discursive and material practices (Friedland and Alford 1991), which provide institutional practitioners with the basic rationale regarding institutional action, an institutional identity, and a vocabulary of motives. Further, a particular institutional system, such as the system of municipal food services in the present study, can be understood as a distinctive institutional field, consisting of a network of public, private, and civic institutions and organizations, and corresponding institutional logics that together constitute a networked system – and a recognized area of life (Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012).

Institutional logics stabilize institutions and institutional fields, as they provide institutional practitioners operational coherence, continuity, and a sense of purpose and identity. However, they also provide practitioners possible opportunities for institutional change, as logics can (at times) be particularized, criticized, or manipulated. A challenge to the dominant institutional logic, for example, can be sparked by changes in operational circumstances or by the purposive action of institutional agents, such as the introduction of alternative institutional logics (possibly borrowed from other institutional fields; see e.g. Harmon, Green, and Goodnight 2015). Taken together, the institutional logics approach thus acknowledges the role of agency, as actors are portrayed as capable of pursuing and effecting intentional (and possibly even unintentional) change in institutional logics (see Haunschild and Chandler 2008; Smets, Morris, and Greenwood 2012; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012). The themes regarding skilful institutional change agency have been further elaborated especially under the concept of institutional entrepreneurship, which we explore next.

Institutional entrepreneurship

The concept of institutional entrepreneurship, originally developed by DiMaggio (1988), describes the role of actors and their agency in institutional change. Institutional entrepreneurs are essentially actors with sufficient resources, and the skills and abilities to make use of the resources, to change or create new institutions that variably reflect their valued interests (DiMaggio 1988; Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence 2004). While earlier studies had focused on examining external factors that contributed to institutional change, the introduction of the concept of institutional entrepreneur provided tools to explore the drivers of change that were internal to institutions, institutional fields, and agents operating therein (Haunschild and Chandler 2008; Smets, Morris, and Greenwood 2012). Furthermore, instead of limiting analysis to the constraints that institutions place on individual actors, the ways in which actors could take a proactive role in interacting with, or even transgressing, constraints became an area of interest (Haunschild and Chandler 2008; Smets, Morris, and Greenwood 2012).

In effect, the study of institutional entrepreneurs reconciles two extremes of institutional research. At one extreme, the focus on institutional structures emphasizes institutional inertia and continuity, eliminating the possibility of individual action and genuine change agency. On the other extreme, placing emphasis solely on agency detaches the actor from any temporal or spatial context. In finding a middle ground between the two poles, it is possible to develop theories that allow for the possibility of institutional inertia and change whilst simultaneously acknowledging the consequential role of actors, their agency, and the possible unintended consequences of their actions (Garud, Hardy, and Maguire 2007). The theory that emerged around the concept of institutional entrepreneurs is thus essentially a theory of action, shedding light on how actors identify and realize new institutional opportunities that emerge in relatively fluid and dynamic institutional fields (Battilana 2006; Dorado 2005; Leca, Battilana, and Boxenbaum 2008).

The concepts and theoretical tools for understanding what this institutional action entails, however, mostly concentrate on one-way or unidimensional change agency enacted by institutional entrepreneurs. Research has focused, for example, on the skills and tactics (e.g. Fligstein 1997; Perkmann and Spicer 2007), the “institutional work” (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006), and the processes of change (Dorado 2005) institutional entrepreneurs or other change agents utilize or engage in whilst effectuating institutional change. Accordingly, Hallett and Hawbaker (2020), for example, have pointed out that the institutional entrepreneurship literature places too much emphasis on the individual and neglects the role of social interaction. Instead, they argue that “change flows from […] the dynamic play of social interaction that […] creates spaces (however small) for creativity and change” (Hallett and Hawbaker 2020, 26). That is, institutional change is not a unilateral process of imposition by skilled and capable individuals but rather it unfolds in relational interactions between institutional entrepreneurs and other stakeholders (see e.g. Emirbayer 1997).

Therefore, although it is widely recognized that institutional entrepreneurs are critical in institutional change, the focus on the individual has overlooked the role of institutional entrepreneurs in the relational microprocesses of institutional change and institutional learning. Especially, there is a need for theoretical tools to analyze, for example, how the interactions between institutional entrepreneurs and various institutional actors and stakeholders affect the change process, how on a day-to-day basis institutional entrepreneurs deal with the pressures of conflicting institutional logics and identity demands, and how they stir up and manage emotional responses to drive (de)institutionalization (Cloutier and Langley 2013; Friedland 2018).

Institutional learning – and how to catalyze it

To fill this theoretical gap, we propose institutional learning as a lens to approach the relational microprocesses of institutional change, without neglecting the role of interactions, emotions, and motivations therein. By combining institutional logics, institutional entrepreneurship, and institutional learning literatures to develop a more nuanced relational interpretation of how institutional entrepreneurs may accomplish institutional transformations, we aim to elucidate the dynamics of purposive institutional transformation processes in more detail. Using the concept of learning we can analyze how institutional entrepreneurs, in micro interactions and encounters, manage affective responses and involvement, and motivate institutional agents and stakeholders to engage in new learning possibilities and trajectories, while being reciprocally influenced by the interactions.

We follow the broad definition of organizational/institutional learning proposed by Huber (1991, 89), according to which “[a]n entity learns if, through its processing of information, the range of its potential behaviors is changed.” Institutional learning differs from individual learning in that the resulting knowledge or behaviours become embedded in the organization’s systems and structures and are independent of individual members of the organization (Crossan, Lane, and White 1999). According to Haunschild and Chandler (2008), institutional learning involves a change in the institution due to a learning experience, which may be initiated, for instance, by institutional entrepreneurs. In practice, institutional learning typically occurs in an organizational context as a dynamic process that takes place on multiple spatial and temporal levels, resulting in changes in organizational behaviour (see also Crossan, Lane, and White 1999). Interestingly, however, the more specific role of institutional entrepreneurship in and for institutional learning remains elusive and thus warrants investigation.

We propose that skilful and persistent transformational work enacted by institutional entrepreneurs plays a key role in institutional learning processes – and is thus a critical success factor when pursuing institutional transformations. As extant discursive and material practices in a given institutional field embody taken-for-granted institutional logics that tend to reinforce their own logic and disregard the need for institutional learning, the transformational work of institutional entrepreneurs should target, and consist of, both discursive and material aspects and practices (i.e. both dimensions in which institutional logics manifest). With material practices we denote the tangible actions and doings involving material objects, arrangements, and technologies that are both the target of and the means by which institutional entrepreneurs can effect change (cf. Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012). With discursive practices we refer to both how actors within the institutional field give order and meaning to reality (Friedland and Alford 1991) as well as to the rhetorical legitimation and delegitimation work done by institutional entrepreneurs to affect the legitimacy perceptions of institutional practitioners.

Legitimation is essentially about providing understandable and acceptable reasons and justifications for institutional actions and practices, typically in reference to such institutional logics that are assumed to have currency in the institutional field (see DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Lawrence and Phillips 2004; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012). As such, legitimation is critical for convincing practitioners to engage in learning and adopting new practices. However, since an institutional practice or logic can also be rendered an issue of controversy by evoking persuasive counterarguments against it (cf. Billig 1996), the discursive practice of delegitimation, that is, criticizing or challenging the belief in the appropriateness of an institutional logic (cf. Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Maguire and Hardy 2009; Seo and Creed 2002), ought to be part of the toolkit of skilful institutional entrepreneurs.

How might institutional entrepreneurs then enact such an interplay between material and discursive practices to catalyze institutional learning? The introduction of novel practices, such as, in our case, the systematic prioritization of locally sourced foods in municipal food services advocated by institutional entrepreneurs, can also be seen to introduce a divergent institutional logic into the institutional field – something that needs to be adopted and learned by practitioners in the field. On the one hand, the introduction of the new logic implies that it needs to be legitimated with arguments that have sufficiently broad appeal among practitioners. On the other hand, the dissemination and learning of novel material and discursive practices might be halted by firmly embedded extant practices and logics (such as, deep-seated market logics that prioritize short-term minimization of economic costs over, say, long-term sustainability concerns). In such a situation, to pave the way for institutional learning, the institutional entrepreneurs would need to engage in discursive efforts to delegitimize extant practices and logics.

A process model of institutionalization and institutional learning

Like institutional change, which is a process where institutional entrepreneurs exercise relational power to iteratively modify the institution (Sotarauta and Mustikkamäki 2015), the transformational work that institutional entrepreneurs undertake rarely unfolds linearly. Institutional change is often described using a lifecycle view of institutionalization (e.g. Haunschild and Chandler 2008; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Perkmann and Spicer 2007), where the lifecycle commonly consists of disrupting or dismantling the old institution or institutional practice, creating, or building a new one, and diffusing, embedding, and eventually maintaining a new institution. As both the processes of institutionalization and institutional/organizational learning are dynamic in nature (e.g. Crossan, Lane, and White 1999; Haunschild and Chandler 2008), parallels exist between them. This link is illustrated by Hendry (1996), who characterizes organizational transformations commonly following a cyclical three-stage learning process. During the initial so-called “unfreezing” phase, organizational unlearning takes place in the form of challenging dominant beliefs and values. This, we argue, corresponds to the phase in the lifecycle of institutions where the old institution is disrupted and dismantled. Hendry (1996) further notes that in the successive change phase, an alternative organizational practice is devised and skills and competencies that make available a new range of actions are developed and diffused. Again, this phase shares commonalities with the change phase in institutionalization, where new institutional practices are created and built. Finally, we interpret that Hendry’s (1996) final “refreezing” phase, which consists of embedding the new organizational practice by rewarding or reinforcing what has been learned during the change phase, is in line with the phase in the lifecycle of institutions where the new institution is diffused (see e.g. Perkmann and Spicer 2007). We therefore propose that the lifecycle view of learning, with its close parallels to the lifecycle view of institutionalization, allows us to focalize our analysis on the microprocesses of institutional change and shed light on the social interactions and transactions that drive it.

The transformational work of institutional entrepreneurs is thus likely to consist of repetitive cycles of, and alterations between, material-practical experimentation, legitimation and delegitimation vis-à-vis their institutionally important environments, audiences, and stakeholders. If done skilfully and persistently, such transformational institutional entrepreneurship can catalyze institutional learning and, subsequently, drive enduring institutional change that allows for the organic evolution of a legitimate institution. Our case municipality is a rare example of successful purposive institutional change and an interesting best practice example both nationally and internationally. As such, it offers an opportunity to analyze how the transformational work enacted by institutional entrepreneurs and their role in the relational interactions and microprocesses of institutional change and learning contributed to the success of the change project.

Materials and method

The institutional field of public food services in Finland

Public food services refer to catering services provided for schools, hospitals, and other public organizations that are supported fully or partially by public funds. The public sector has been of interest regarding its capacity to influence sustainable change in the food system (Kaye Nijaki and Worrel 2012; Kujala, Hakala, and Viitaharju 2022). Finland presents a distinct case in this regard internationally, because of its long history of providing free meals for school children, and the exceptionally large role of the public sector in education and health care. Presently, more than 294 million meals are served by public food services in Finland each year (Lintunen 2020) and the annual value of public food procurement in Finnish municipalities is over 241M€ (State Treasury). As opposed to many other countries, the public sector in Finland therefore has considerable leverage in influencing local markets through public procurement decisions. The key activities that comprise the field of public food services and connect public and private actors into a networked system include procurement as well as preparing and serving meals. While in Finland these services can be viewed as a relatively established macro-level institutional field, in our examination we zoom in on the specific institutional logics, organizations, actors, and practices related to food services at the municipal scale.

The procurement law¹ in Finland encourages to consider environmental and social effects of purchased goods and services. In this respect, local food is seen as a key strategic instrument to promote sustainability in public catering (Kujala, Hakala, and Viitaharju 2022; Risku-Norja and Mikkola 2014). Correspondingly, the public sector is considered an important market for local food producers (Paananen and Forsman 2003). The political reasoning behind this emphasis relates to the perceived significance of locally sourced food for local economies, local food cultures, security of supply, and shortening of the supply chain (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry 2021). However, in many regions it has proved challenging to increase the purchase of local food. Barriers include the unsuitability of local products, centralized procurement units requiring large delivery volumes, and lack of available funds (Kujala, Hakala, and Viitaharju 2022). In practice, shrinking economic resources have caused price to become a decisive factor in food procurement (Risku-Norja and Mikkola 2014) and social and environmental aspects have been overlooked (Aalto and Heiskanen 2011).

While there may be regional differences, our interpretation is that not only public food procurement, but also the institutional field of public food services in Finland is dominated by institutional logics emphasizing economic efficiency, centralization, and cutting of costs. Correspondingly, Hedberg and Lounsbury (2021) have identified tensions between what they call a local food logic (emphasizing community and environmental values) and an industrial food logic (emphasizing economic values). To advance their goals, local food actors (i.e. institutional entrepreneurs) need to address these tensions by negotiating the relationships between multiple logics and creating space for their co-existence (Hedberg and Lounsbury 2021; Mars and Schau 2017).

Description of the municipality

Our case concerns a rural municipality situated in Northern Finland. Characterized by long distances and a population of less than 10,000 inhabitants, the municipality is sparsely populated (Statistics Finland). As is typical for many rural municipalities, the population of the municipality has been declining for years. The economic structure resembles those of other municipalities in Northern Finland, where main employers include the service sector and industry. Primary production has a relatively significant role in the northern region as compared to the whole country, and milk and meat production dominate agricultural production. Additionally, the public sector, local governments, wholesale, retail, logistics, and mining are among significant employers. Moreover, the Arctic location creates specific conditions that make food production in the region distinct from the rest of the country. Such conditions include, for example, the long period of midnight sun in the summer, harsher climate, and longer distances between actors in the food chain.

Data collection and analysis

We collected the research material in the context of a series of interconnected research projects concerning the case municipality during 2014–2023. The material forms a rich longitudinal qualitative data corpus that allows us to analyze temporal change in the institutional field. The most recent data set, collected during 2021–2023, serves as our primary data and consists of eight semi-structured individual and group interviews with public officials, local food producers, decision-makers, and experts (Tables 1 and 2). The data set also includes observational notes and textual material collected during a five-day field visit to the municipality (spring 2022) as well as transcribed data from thematic local events (Table 3). As regards the primary data, our data collection and analysis procedures were informed by a grounded theory approach (Corbin and Strauss 2008). We supplement the primary data set with interview data regarding the municipality’s sustainable development visions, strategies, and practices, collected in 2018 (Table 2) and in 2014 (Table 3).

Table 1. Individual interviews.

Role	Number of interviews	Year(s)
Food service manager (FSM)	3	2022, 2023
Development manager (DM)	1	2021
Local food producer X	1	2022
Local food producer Y	1	2023
Council chair of a neighbouring municipality	1	2023

Table 2. Group interviews.

Group	Participants	Year
Local food company	Local food entrepreneur A/Municipal decision-maker	2022
	Local food entrepreneur B
	Local food entrepreneur C
	Local food entrepreneur D
Municipal representatives	Development manager (DM)	2018
	Local food entrepreneur A/Municipal decision-maker
Development experts	Development expert A	2018
	Development expert B
	Development expert C

Table 3. Other material.

Source	Year
Transcribed data from a local food webinar	2022
Transcribed data from a municipal council meeting	2022
Transcribed data from a municipal strategy workshop	2014
Field visit notes	2022

In the first round of interviews (2021–2022), we intended to identify critical incidents (Woolsey 1986) that had affected the project and its phases. In the subsequent interviews (2023) we asked clarifying questions and inquired about the timely developments of the project. Our interviews and analyzes focused on identifying and comparing what kinds of arguments, justifications and accounts interviewees gave when recounting what has been, and should be, done (or not) to drive the local food project. The comparison enabled us to detect whether and how the arguments and legitimations initially put forward by the institutional entrepreneurs were adopted and accepted also by other stakeholders. This provides a feasible way to systematically examine institutional sense-making of agents through deliberately planned interview situations (see Niska, Olakivi, and Vesala 2018).

The first phase of our analysis followed the principle of literal reading (Mason 2002). Our systematic analysis of the key interviews from 2021–2023 was informed by the grounded theory approach (Corbin and Strauss 2008). Using a series of “sensitizing questions” we conducted an initial open coding (Corbin and Strauss 2008) to identify how events had unfolded over time. Specifically, we searched for observations that provided answers to the following questions: who are the actors or actor networks described in the data; what are these actors or actor networks doing; why; and what enables or hinders their activities. As patterns began to emerge, we identified five codes: actors/actor networks, enablers, obstacles, goals, and values. We then went through the data again and using qualitative data analysis software, we each coded separate parts of the data. Using the coded observations, we developed “organizational profiles” in which we distilled the core information regarding the actors/actor networks, enablers, obstacles, goals, and values for each organization involved in the study.

In the second phase of the analysis, we moved to an interpretive reading of the data (Mason 2002). At this point, we also extended our analysis to cover other parts of the data corpus, including observational notes, interview data from 2014–2018, and transcribed data from relevant thematic events (see Tables 1–3). We did not code these parts of the data, but rather used observations from them to complement findings from the main data corpus. Having identified the central themes, patterns, and linkages in the data, we proceeded to contextualize them within existing theoretical literature. We identified the new institutionalist research as relevant as it captured the cross-cutting dynamic of purposive institutional change reflected in the data. Finally, we engaged in a process of iterative discussions by which we refined the interplay between theoretical concepts and interpretations. Our results are thus theoretically informed, but the observations that underpin our interpretations arise from the data.

Findings

Setting the scene

The local food project carried out in our case municipality was part of a broader shift in the municipality’s development strategy that took place during the first decades of the millennium. By 2010, municipal management and decision-makers had grown increasingly aware of the issues that the powerful centralizing tendencies, characteristic of a globalized economy, were causing to remote rural economies and communities. As part of the effort to gain full understanding of the circumstances the municipality hired a development manager (DM), who emerged as one of the two institutional entrepreneurs in our study, to outline the situational picture and launch development work.

At the core of the diagnosis was a view that the economically centralizing and cost-minimizing market logic was thwarting the possibilities of viable and sustainable development in the municipality – including food production and provisioning. Especially problematic, according to municipal officials and decision-makers, were centralized value chains, portrayed to extract economic value from the region and direct it to centres outside the region. One manifestation of this dynamic was the lack of regional processing and value-adding activities, viewed as having caused a vicious cycle where acute cost-saving and efficiency concerns overrode any longer-term sustainable rural development considerations (DM 2018, 2021). Local development expert A described the events as a form of capital flight and worried about the existing dynamic where primary products were shipped elsewhere for processing and bought back as finished products (Interview 2018).

The logic was viewed as so ingrained in the structures of the economic system that it was considered very difficult to perceive and address by means of typical development policy measures (DM 2021). Moreover, interviewees agreed that the problematic logic was not only an economic issue but constrained the possibilities of developing and addressing pertinent sustainability and wellbeing concerns in the municipality and the region.

Against the backdrop of these findings, the focal actors in the municipality produced a novel development strategy to address the situation. As a result, the municipality began to prioritize and invest in local development initiatives with the view of creating more sustainable, long-term value in the region. For the DM, a key visionary of the strategy, this meant the “relocalization” of value chains to ensure that economic value-added could be channelled into regional investments and to prevent capital outflow (Interview 2018).

The vision, emphasizing the need for sustainable relocalization of economic activities remained not only in the minds of a few selected officials or experts, but was relatively broadly discussed and shared. In 2014, for example, a series of participatory workshops was organized, engaging local officials, entrepreneurs, development experts, and civil society representatives in formulating a common vision for sustainable development in the municipality by 2030. The resulting vision highlighted the need to expand local networks and create shorter, locally based value chains as well as balance the goals of sustainable economic, social, and environmental development (Strategy workshop 2014).

The municipality was successful in attracting research and development funding from various regional, national, and EU sources, contributing to the formation of a lively network of development projects that variably pursued the overall development vision. Promoting the production and use of local food emerged as one of the flagship projects as it was broadly understood as an important strategic tool to achieve sustainability goals. A new food service manager (FSM) was hired to plan and execute the transformation of the municipal food service system. With extensive experience in public food services and sharing the municipality’s understanding of the issue at hand, the FSM emerged as the other institutional entrepreneur in the transformation process.

Institutional entrepreneurs as drivers of the institutionalization cycle

In the following sections, we describe the institutional change process in more detail. The cyclical and iterative nature of the institutional change process poses a challenge to delineating and categorizing its constituting actions and events. For clarity, we have opted to categorize the events in our case study into three phases following the lifecycle approaches to institutionalization (e.g. Haunschild and Chandler 2008) and organizational learning (Hendry 1996). Although the analytical abstraction necessarily obscures some of the complexity of the process, it helps to reveal how the three phases together form an iterative cycle. In this first section, we focus on the institutional work done by institutional entrepreneurs to dismantle, or “unfreeze” (Hendry 1996), the old institutional logic; focus is thus on discursive transformational work. The second section concentrates on describing the new material practices and arrangements that were introduced to effect change; focus shifts correspondingly to practical and material transformational work. The last section looks at efforts done to embed, or refreeze, the emergent institutional logic. Finally, it might assist the reader to understand the sequence of events of the local food project. Officially, the transformation of the municipal food service system kicked off in 2012, when the municipal council gave the project approval. This was followed by the FSM developing a new food preparation system around which a new central kitchen was built. Having established kitchen operations, the decision was made to break away from the central procurement unit.

Deinstitutionalization: delegitimizing old and legitimizing new institutional logics

One of the recurring themes that was highlighted throughout the data were the extensive amount of dialogue and communication that took place between the institutional entrepreneurs and various groups of stakeholders during the project. To initiate the project, it was crucial to attain political buy-in, but also each time there was a change in the municipal council, new members of the council needed to be convinced of the benefits of the project. The DM described the cycle of delegitimizing, legitimizing, and developing institutional practices as a persistent and gradually progressing dialogical process:

[…] it did require a lot of dialogue, […] and discussion and justifying and if you think about the last council, things went really well at the end, but the beginning … there was a lot of doubt and a couple of people constantly came and asked questions, they were genuinely interested, and they just asked and asked, we discussed for hours […] (Interview 2018)

A central argument that was used by the institutional entrepreneurs to convince local stakeholders of the unviability of the existing institutional logic and thus the necessity of a more viable and legitimate alternative, was how the municipal food service system at the time was disadvantageous to the local economy and community. The existing market-based logic was argued to be exclusionary, depriving local producers and inhabitants of work/business opportunities and profits (DM 2021). The FSM positioned themselves on the side of the local producers, sympathizing with their plight and laying the blame on external forces (Interview 2022). Further delegitimizing rhetoric was used when mobilizing opposition against the actions of multinational companies in the region. The FSM spoke of a fear of large companies overtaking local businesses and recalled at least three attempts by industrial players to “hijack” the municipal kitchen, including its production equipment (Interview 2022). The “chronic lack of staff”, a problem shared by both the central kitchen and local producers, was also attributed to the predatory nature of large companies (FSM 2022; Local food company 2022).

While delegitimizing the extant institutional logic, the institutional entrepreneurs sought to simultaneously legitimize the new envisioned institutional logic. The DM described the new logic in terms of a loose decentralized network of local food producers and other businesses, where the central aim was to improve regional economic, social, and environmental sustainability (DM 2021). Although the dominant market logic was strongly criticized, the criticism was not aimed towards market logic per se but rather the outcomes it created locally. A key aspect of the new institutional logic was thus a reorientation away from “faceless markets” to local markets, as part of a deliberate aim to build a collaboration culture based on dialogue and personal contacts. The goal was to shift the focus from short-term cost minimization to the creation of long-term socio-economic and environmental well-being. This collaborative model was seen to enable local food producers to shed their old role of passive suppliers to industry and become proactive members of local networks and markets (DM 2021).

The local food producers that were interviewed related with the underdog position they faced with large industrial actors. According to local food producer Y, it manifested as a tendency for producers to narrowly focus on production, allowing the industry and wholesale companies to take care of the rest. This had put local producers in a passive role, forgetting how to process, market and appreciate their products (Interview 2023). As evidenced by the interviews, the local food producers accepted and operated according to the logic of the market economy, emphasizing the economic benefits of trade and increased business opportunities. However, they expressed the same arguments about the need to reorient the market logic to work to the benefit of local community, indicating that they had sided with legitimizing arguments used by the institutional entrepreneurs.

According to the FSM and supported by remarks from local food producer Y, local, regional, and national decision-makers had surprisingly little knowledge of the broader consequences of the dominant institutional logic on the regional economy and the limited opportunities available to local actors (Interview 2022; Interview 2023). The FSM described how extensive communication efforts, including concrete examples, were needed to convince decision-makers of the legitimacy of the new institutional logic: “[…] we had to show the decision-makers that this will create this many jobs, this amount of tax money” (Interview 2022). A representative from a governmental research organization elaborated on the efforts:

[…] we visit all municipalities in Northern-Finland and tell them about [local food] and what it enables […] in the region and what kind of positive impact it has on livelihoods and well-being, what the EU law entails, or EU directives, and what the procurement law says and so on. (Webinar 2022)

The same arguments concerning the economic disadvantages to local food producers were also used when the municipal kitchen decided to break away from the central procurement unit. This time, the argument was adjusted to put less emphasis on the economy and more on the individual producer. The FSM described the institutional logic that prevailed in procurement:

[…] we have this weird custom here in the procurement law and in these large public procurement units that we don’t talk about things, and then you just request proposals and if you don’t divide it into smaller units, they are so big there is no way a small producer can bid. (Interview 2022)

In addition to highlighting the unthinking and repetitive nature of the existing procurement process, the FSM sought to delegitimize the institutional logic related to procurement by emphasizing the detrimental effects focusing procurement decisions on cost had on local producers. These were argued to arise mainly from the fact that conventionally, procurement decisions were based on price, disregarding social impacts and effects on the regional economy (Interview 2022). Local food producer Y agreed and added that basing procurement decisions on other factors besides price could open opportunities for smaller producers (Interview 2023).

By engaging in the concurrent process of delegitimizing the existing institutional logic with arguments about its disadvantages and legitimizing the envisioned new institutional logic by highlighting its benefits, the institutional entrepreneurs contributed to the process of deinstitutionalization. In doing so, they cleared the way for the introduction of new material practices that would constitute the new institutional logic and eventually a characteristically new institution.

Building and legitimizing a new institutional logic in practice

The renewal of the municipal food service system necessitated a comprehensive reassessment and a meticulous examination of existing operations and practical-material arrangements (FSM 2022). Applying Hendry (1996), this phase was characterized by change, including the introduction of new material practices as well as unlearning old and learning new skills. Key events in this process were the establishment of a new centralized kitchen to replace a chain of old municipal kitchens and the concurrent redesign of associated functions, notably food preparation and procurement.

Concretely, this process played out in the form of institutional learning, characterized by a process of managing tensions between information derived from past learning (feedback) and incorporating new learning in organizational or institutional practices (feed forward) (Crossan, Lane, and White 1999). By capitalizing on their experience as well as utilizing organizational search strategies and trial-and-error experimentation (Levitt and March 1988), the FSM set out to identify and refine alternative practices to incorporate in the central kitchen and food preparation system. They skilfully engaged in, and shifted between temporal modes of agency (past, present, and future) (Dorado 2005) and concretely effectuated (Sarasvathy 2001) institutional learning by developing and testing new practices, and searching and borrowing them from other institutional fields (Levitt and March 1988). The industrial practice of food component production emerged as a possible alternative to replace old practices: “if industry knows how to cook and achieve keepability then why can’t we” (FSM 2022). Multiple rounds of tests and experimentation confirmed that industrial food component preparation was feasible in a non-industrial setting and was consequently adopted as a new practice for food preparation, with the new kitchen built along these principles (FSM 2022).

The idea of relocalization was inherent in many of the new practices that were introduced. This meant that practices that had previously been outsourced were now incorporated as part of the functioning of the new kitchen: technology that enabled the kitchen to receive unprocessed local ingredients and process them on-site was acquired (DM 2021); the kitchen staff took part in developing new equipment for the kitchen by directly communicating with the manufacturing company (Field visit notes 2022); and, the kitchen purchased their own delivery trucks and hired staff to run deliveries (FSM 2022).

While there may have been some initial hesitancy among the kitchen staff, the resistance to change among existing middle management was considerable (DM 2021). Especially contentious was the shift to practices copied from industry (DM 2021). The new institutional logic put pressure on management to take on a more proactive role in teaching staff and further developing practices. Reactions from some managers were emotional (FSM 2022), implying that the change in institutional logic was felt on a more personal level, possibly perceived as a threat to their established professional identities. The FSM took to manage these emotional responses by engaging stakeholders in adopting and further refining new practices, adjusting work schedules, and streamlining the organizational structure. The FSM recalled that: “[…] the working conditions improved so much that no one would switch back to old ways” (Interview 2022). The learning of new skills and ways of working empowered the kitchen staff to regain motivation and professional pride (FSM 2022; Field visit notes 2022), which contributed to legitimizing the new practices. The organizational learning that occurred during the process manifested as changes in routines, practices, and material arrangements (cf. Argote and Miron-Spektor 2011), constituting a change in the guiding institutional logic.

Following the completion of the new central kitchen and the establishment of new food preparation practices, the focus of transformative efforts shifted towards the procurement system (DM 2021). The objective was to increase the procurement share of locally sourced ingredients. However, the centralized procurement unit, to which the kitchen was affiliated at the time, posed constraints to the realization of this objective. The FSM explained:

[…] once we were done with the tests and started to build the kitchen, I began to survey the market to see who could be potential actors. That’s how we found a meat supplier, a fish supplier and we worked together and for the first bidding process we had to, first of all we had to break away from the centralized procurement unit because I asked them, […] I wanted to stay with the procurement unit and procure wholesale items like coffee and sugar jointly, things you can’t get locally, but I wasn’t allowed, that’s when I said it’s all or nothing. (Interview 2022)

Disengaging from the procurement unit marked a significant rupture in established practices, and the FSM and local food producers found themselves inadequately equipped to successfully complete bidding processes. The FSM lacked proficiency in issuing requests for proposals, while local producers encountered challenges in bidding. However, through a process of reciprocal learning, realized through the actions of market dialogue and product development, the behaviour of both parties changed so that they could conduct the procurement process successfully (Interview 2022).

In addition to sustained dialogue and negotiation, the achievement was ascribed to uncovering the possibilities awarded by the procurement law. Previously, the kitchen as well as local producers had been constrained by an institutional logic that aligned with a narrow interpretation of the procurement law. However, the FSM, in reciprocal interaction with the local food producers, was able to break away from the confines of the old institutional logic, adeptly harnessing the broader spectrum of possibilities accorded by the procurement law, capitalizing on its provisions to their advantage. An example of this was the procurement of bread rolls. The FSM had an idea to decrease the size of the bread rolls served to better cater for small children (FSM 2022). Operating within the parameters of the procurement law but shifting the focus of bids from price to the size of the bread roll, afforded local food producers, with agile and flexible production processes, an avenue for participation in the bidding process. This change in practices rendered the procurement process more amenable to the operational dynamics of local producers, while concurrently excluding larger industrial actors from the competition. The introduction of the new institutional logic into the procurement practice was so skilfully prepared and implemented that industry, initially protesting the new practice and threatening with legal action, lacked grounds to substantiate its objections.

Similar to the deinstitutionalization phase, dialogue and communication were central aspects in introducing new material practices and skills, highlighting the intertwinement between discursive and material transformational work. During this phase, the institutional entrepreneurs catalyzed and drove the mutual learning process that underpinned the institutional change in kitchen practices and procurement. The changes were legitimized by increasing the well-being of kitchen staff through concrete changes in material practices (FSM 2022). Legitimation vis-à-vis local producers took the form of market dialogue and product development, which aimed at enabling local businesses to develop their operations and product range and sign contracts with the central kitchen, ensuring a consistent market for the products of the local producers and also affording a sense of security and stability (FSM 2022; Local producer Y 2023).

Completing institutionalization: cementing institutional practices and their legitimacy

Having engaged in discursive delegitimation and legitimation work and established new material practices, what remained for the institutional entrepreneurs was to complete the institutionalization cycle by cementing, or “refreezing” (Hendry 1996), the new institutional logic and its legitimacy. The DM acknowledged the importance of this phase, stating that until new established practices and organizations emerge, the change process remained difficult and unpredictable. They added that if changes were not properly integrated into the broader context, there was a risk of reverting back to old ways (Interview 2018).

Consequently, the institutional entrepreneurs sought to embed the emerging institutional logic within the institutional field of municipal food services by disseminating the new discursive and material practices among a wider range of stakeholders and across municipal borders. The interviews consistently underscored the significance of creating networks, fostering business opportunities, and establishing local markets as critical factors to ensure the ongoing viability of integrating local food within municipal food services in the future. One way of achieving this was through regional development projects. The central kitchen and municipality engaged in a variety of projects aiming at, for instance, encouraging the use of local food in municipal kitchens, developing tools to measure the use of local products, and improving logistics (FSM 2022). The FSM also developed a set of best practice guidebooks on how to procure and incorporate local ingredients and products in municipal food services, which were made available nationwide to other mass catering kitchens as well as decision-makers (FSM 2022).

Another tool utilized by the institutional entrepreneurs to embed the new institutional logic was networking events. A representative from a governmental research organization explained how they had toured surrounding municipalities informing central kitchens and local food producers of the new institutional practices related to procurement. The representative recalled being positively surprised of how many new businesses were launched as a result (Webinar 2022). Furthermore, cooperation among producers, the expansion of networks, broader markets, and increased recognizability were seen as central enabling factors to business (Local food company 2022; Local producer X 2022; Local producer Y 2023).

Successful cementing of the legitimacy of the new institutional logic is evidenced by how readily other actors learned and internalized the new practices introduced by the institutional entrepreneurs. The FSM described the process of introducing new practices at the central kitchen as a virtuous spiral where successful changes motivated the kitchen staff to take responsibility for further developing their skills and kitchen practices (Interview 2022), illustrating the role of and the need to recognize and manage emotions in the institutionalization process (Friedland 2018). The new practices and behaviours became embedded in the functions of the central kitchen and surrounding network to the extent that the FSM was able to detach from the day-to-day operations of the central kitchen (Field visit notes 2022; Interview 2022). The newly gained independence empowered the kitchen staff to expand their service repertoire and provide catering services for private individuals in addition to serving schools, hospitals, and nursing homes (Interview 2022). Similarly, hesitation among the local producers towards community thinking and cooperation was overcome by appealing to the core identities of the local producers and dealing with emotions of envy. Accordingly, a “love for the local”, an appreciation of the region, and maintaining local autonomy were repeated as driving sentiments incentivizing local food producers to continue cooperation with the central kitchen and local food project (FSM 2022; Local food company 2022; Local producers X and Y 2022).

The interview data also shows how the learning process resulted in local as well as regional stakeholders internalizing the discourse of the new institutional logic. The municipal administrator, for example, learned to repeat the legitimizing arguments of the institutional entrepreneurs in the context of municipal decision-making (Municipal council meeting 2022). Additionally, new practices became embedded in the municipal decision making system to the extent that municipal officials learned to trust the accuracy and quality of procurement proposals and routinely approved them without extra scrutiny (FSM 2022). At the regional level, local logistics businesses began to situate their own business within the new institutional logic and offer services that complemented and added to the new practices (Webinar 2022). Furthermore, the chair of the council of a neighbouring municipality referred to the need to embrace the new institutional logic due to the value it brings to the local economy and businesses (Interview 2023). Also, the regional economic development agency acknowledged the salience of the new practices in grappling the challenges regional economies were facing (Webinar 2022).

These examples highlight the nature of the accomplished purposive institutional transformation as a cyclically enacted learning process, where it was crucial for the institutional entrepreneurs to identify and launch both feasible new material arrangements and corresponding legitimating arguments that appealed to the core values and identities of practitioners and motivated them to commit to the learning trajectory despite encountered challenges.

Discussion

While institutional change and the role of institutional entrepreneurs in effectuating the changes is a well-researched area of scholarship, existing analyzes have tended to approach change agency as a unidimensional and one directional process (Hallett and Hawbaker 2020). We find that this focus on the individual change agent obscures the relational nature of institutional change processes and overlooks the transformational work institutional entrepreneurs effectuate through micro interactions and encounters by managing affective responses and involvement (Friedland 2018) and motivating institutional agents and stakeholders to engage in new learning possibilities and trajectories.

To illustrate the relational dynamics in detail, we focused on a municipality situated in Northern Finland, which had managed to transform their municipal food services to align with a new development strategy aiming at increasing regional sustainability. Using longitudinal qualitative data collected during 2014–2023, we investigated the role and activities of focal transformative agents in a process of purposive institutional transformation. In analyzing the interview data, we sought to identify and compare what kinds of arguments, justifications, and accounts of action interviewees gave when recounting what has been, and should be, done (or not) to drive the local food project. As such, the data offered an opportunity to analyze how the transformative work enacted by institutional entrepreneurs and their role in the relational interactions and microprocesses of institutional change and learning contributed to the success of the change project.

We found that the established logic and modus operandi of the institutional field around municipal food services was challenged by deliberate interventions enacted by clearly identifiable transformative agents, notably the development manager (DM) and the food service manager (FSM). The qualities, roles and actions of these change agents correspond to those viewed as characteristic of institutional entrepreneurs (DiMaggio 1988). Equipped with important resources (knowledge, social contacts, networks, skills, symbolic and cultural capital) they were able to engage in transformational work, consisting of material and discursive practices, to catalyze and effectuate a process of reciprocal institutional learning. As a result, the prevailing institutional logic (Friedland and Alford 1991; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012), characterized by economically centralizing and cost-minimizing tendencies, transformed towards an institutional logic based on long-term socioeconomic and environmental well-being.

Our case further illustrates how the institutional transformation ignited by the institutional entrepreneurs was not a solo activity (see Sotarauta et al. 2021). Instead, it manifested as a collaborative process, where the institutional entrepreneurs skilfully sought out and interacted with pivotal stakeholders. The institutional learning process (Hendry 1996), aptly paralleling the lifecycle of institutional change (see e.g. Haunschild and Chandler 2008), describes how the institutional entrepreneurs, engaged in iterative cycles of reciprocal interaction with stakeholders, dismantled (unfroze), built, and reinforced (refroze) a set of new discursive and material institutional practices. Specifically, the work entailed deinstitutionalization (Oliver 1992), where in an overlapping process of material-practical experimentation and discursive efforts of delegitimation and legitimation, the institutional entrepreneurs variably challenged and dismantled prevailing institutional practices and logics, while introducing and arguing for alternative ones (Garud, Hardy, and Maguire 2007; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Maguire and Hardy 2009). The interactions with stakeholders presented opportunities for the institutional entrepreneurs to catalyze learning processes, characterized by the exertion of mutual and reciprocal influence of institutional entrepreneurs and other stakeholders on one another (see e.g. Emirbayer 1997). This interplay manifested in the form of new material and discursive institutional practices, transformed professional and personal identities and, eventually, embedded the legitimacy of the novel institutional logic and practices within the wider cultural context of the institutional field.

We utilized Huber’s (1991) definition of learning, which interprets learning as a change in the range of potential behaviours. For a behaviour to become potential, it requires acceptance and inclusion in the habitual and discursive fluency of the actor, as opposed to situations where the actor superficially adopts or performs new practices and reverts to old ways as soon as the impetus for change is removed. In the case municipality, the learning processes created by institutional entrepreneurs managed to change the rules and logics governing municipal food services so that, consequently, the behaviours of the key organizations operating in the institutional field changed in a systematic and permanent fashion during the observation period. What makes the accomplishment of such an institutional learning task particularly striking, is that the institutional logic(s) in the field of municipal food services became both embedded and embodied in the actions and behaviours of a multiplicity of agents and organizations operating in the institutional field (incl. public, private and civic agents). For the purposive transformation effort to succeed, all (or at least most) of these agents and organizations must accept the pursued changes in focal institutional logic(s) (explicitly or implicitly) and adopt the novel logic in their own operations and as part of their personal and professional identities.

Although our study would have benefitted from an even larger selection of interviewees, the data were rich enough to allow us to illustrate the potential of combining institutionalism and institutional learning to uncover and analyze the factors that enable institutional change in depth. However, there is no guarantee that the positive change elicited in our case example is stable. Embedded in a macro-institutional context containing sharply different, potentially hostile institutional logics, the process of institutionalization is constantly on-going. The dynamic nature of the process is an enabler of change but also a possible threat for achieved successes.

Conclusions

We contribute to the understanding of how purposive institutional transformation is feasible and possible. We further develop understanding of the relational microprocesses institutional entrepreneurs engage in when effectuating institutional change. Using the purposive transformation of municipal food services as an example, we illustrate how institutional entrepreneurs effectuated institutional change by engaging in transformational work that consisted of catalyzing iterative and reciprocal learning processes. These relational interactions resulted in a change in organizational identities, goals, practices, and vocabularies of motives, which constitute a transformation in institutional logic and thus signify institutional change. The relational nature of transformation makes the change in institutional logic(s) personally relevant for the agents operating in the institutional field. Our analysis shows how identities and sense-making practices of the agents were threatened, changed, or reinforced and how a crucial skill of the institutional entrepreneurs was to render this change understandable, feasible and legitimate.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments and the journal editors for their assistance during the process of finalizing the article. Moreover, we would like to extend our gratitude to the research participants who took the time to share with us their experiences, views, and knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Finland [grant number 343277] – Skills of Self-provisioning in Rural Communities (SOS) Research Project and the University of Helsinki Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences (DENVI).

Notes

1 Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts, 1397, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland (2016). https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2016/en20161397.